Unprecedentedly Dirty Work: U.S. Army Shares Responsibility With Mercenaries, Paramilitaries
Voice of Russia
July 22, 2011
US army shares responsibility with mercenaries
Yekaterina Kudashkina
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“When we come to outsourcing, we find that this allows Americans to hire local people for money, of course, for very dirty work inside their own country. I think it is a dangerous thing and it really removes the barrier between the violation by American army and those people who work for American paramilitary institutions” Gennady Yevstafiev, retired Lieutenant General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, said in a Voice of Russia interview.
The American army is not participating in supply lines, for example, through Pakistan to Afghanistan. The protection of the supply lines is done by private military companies. What is this? This is a sort of institution which hires very qualified, very often retired people from the American armed forces and the CIA and it is keeping them as participators in American aggression all through the world. But they are not uniformed, they are paid in a different way. So, when it comes to casualties of the American army for example in Afghanistan it is about 4,000 people through these ten years. But the private paramilitary companies are not counted into these losses, whereas during these ten years American private paramilitary companies have lost almost a thousand people.
So, it is not counted into the overall number of American army losses. And the CIA in its turn is doing the same thing. For example, you remember Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The prisoners of Abu Ghraib were kept by private paramilitary forces and that’s why there was a tremendous excess in the violation of human rights. Not only the military of the American army violated but mostly the paramilitary private companies were violating the rights of the prisoners and they have inflicted so many insults on the national religion and character.
So, this development is taking a growing role in American military expeditions. The administration is in a position to minimize military losses. Various American institutions are using them for rather dirty work. You remember that there was a lot of discussion about the American secret prisons in Europe, including in Eastern Europe, and in other parts of the world, especially in Asian and Arab countries. They were kept by paramilitary forces and the representatives of the CIA only brought and left them there under the guard of the private paramilitary representatives.
And when we come to outsourcing, we find that this allows Americans to hire local people for money, of course, for very dirty work inside their own country. The natives are working for the Americans and in this sense they are considered to be part of the whole exercise. I think it is a dangerous thing and it really removes the barrier between the violation by the American army of the human rights of prisoners and POWs and so on and a simple and irresponsible…They are not committed to anybody except for their companies, I mean these people who work for American paramilitary institutions.
And mind you, the American army has a manual of war operations and this manual of war operations prescribes what kind of behavior the American army should follow against the enemy, against POWs and what is allowed and what is not. And in this manual they are keeping the main elements of Geneva Convention.
But these private paramilitary institutions are not bound by these kinds of things and this allows the American administration and certain representatives to use them to carry out unprecedentedly dirty work with all kinds of violations of human rights. And somehow it has not yet become a certain problem which is being discussed. But the time will come and the Americans will be forced to explain what kind of thing it is this private paramilitary force, by which laws they operate and who is responsible for them in the long run. Let’s wait for this time when the international community will touch upon this very sensitive issue.
Mr. Yevstafiev, but is there any international regulation perhaps looking into the issue now? If we talk about, for example, the presence of the US, say in Iraq or in Afghanistan, the US is pledging to reduce their presence there to certain numbers, etc. Do I get it right that those private military contractors are not taken into account?
No, you see, the outsourcing goes further. It brings these private paramilitary institutions into the American foreign policy because it has been announced that some private paramilitary institutions are going to participate in the training of the Afghan army and Iraqi detachments and this allows Mr. Obama to claim that he is moving out American military people. Of course he is moving because he pledged to do this but nobody speaks about the fact that instead of this army with private contracts and agreements with the local governments they introduce private paramilitary institutions for defending the perimeter of very sensitive buildings, installations and so on.
And on the surface it appears that there already 10,000 Americans in Kabul, for example, but if you look into the matter you will see that there are thousands of people who are connected to the idea of making, as this was recently announced, of making Afghanistan their strategic ally.
I think it is a dangerous thing and it really removes the barrier between the violation by the American army of human rights of prisoners and POWs and so on and a simple and irresponsible, they are not committed to anybody except for their companies. I mean these people who work for American paramilitary institutions. And mind you, the American army has a manual of war operations and this manual of war operations prescribes what kind of behavior the American army should follow against the enemy, against POWs and what is allowed and what is not. And in this manual they are keeping the main elements of Geneva Convention.
But these private paramilitary institutions are not bound by this kind of things and this allows the American administrations and certain representatives to use them to carry unprecedentedly dirty work with all kinds of violations of human rights.
Sir, thank you so much. And just to remind you our guest speaker this time was our expert Gennady Yevstafiev, retired Lieutenant General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
